Horace Book

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The Setting: Arizona

Characters:
The Breeding Pair:
Jean Isbel - son of Gaston Isbel and an unnamed First Nations woman who has died before the novel begins. He is our protagonist, and being part FN, he has magical special skills - ie. he has a permanent bonus to all tracking and stealth stats.
Ellen Jorth - daughter of Lee Jorth and the former fiance of Gaston Isbel (also predeceased). She functions as mostly a damsel. She is a "good girl" (ie. virgin) in bad circumstances (ie. surrounded by dudes who sexually assault her, and then make up stories about how they're fucking her), and she is torn between wanting to escape her circumstances and loyalty to her dad.

The Isbels (the "good" guys)
Gaston Isbel - the patriarch, veteran of an unspecified war (and I can't really assume what war, because I super don't know my Texas history, [almost as if I am neither Texan nor USian]), comes from a "good" (rich, I guess?) family in Texas, but left after losing wealth and squabbling with Jorth. He's been widowed twice, traveled around a bunch, left his youngest son up in Oregon and moved down to Arizona, where he's made it rich again as a cattle rancher. But now, some cattle rustlers posing as sheep herders are running him off the land.
Guy Isbel - one of the elder half-brothers, the nicer of the two, 'cause he played with his half siblings.
Traumatized redhead - the wife of Guy Isbel. She's a good girl, got a good head on her shoulders, and stays strong under pressure. Only person to call Gaston Isbel out for his part in escalating the feud.
Bill Isbel - the less nice of the two elder half-brothers. He has a wife and kids, but they don't really do much, and I can't recall any of their names.
Ann Isbel - Jean Isbel's full sister. She's essentially your ideal woman, she's got a new fiance who's been dragged into this feud because he owes her dad for helping him get started. I can't remember if he survived or not, so, obviously, he's pretty important. She mostly tells him how even though Ellen Jorth acts all tough and slutty-like, she's actually a decent girl in a bad place, and doesn't do much after that.
Blue - older guy who says he used to be a big deal gunfighter in Texas. He's one day from retirement, y'all. Or, rather, he came back from retirement. Totally lives to the end.
Others - cowhands, sheepherders and various other men to catch bullets!

The Jorths (the "bad" guys)
Lee Jorth - he somehow opted out of the war that Gaston Isbel fought in, and simultaneously seduced his fiance away from him. Comes from a "bad" family (I'm guessing ...poor?). Had to leave Texas because he got in trouble with the law (because of something Gaston Isbel did or reported), went to Mexico and then came up to Arizona.
Daggs - a built-up rustler and gunfighter who dies surprisingly early and wants to get with Ellen.
Greaves - the store owner who's biased in favour of one family.
Queen - a notable (eh, kinda?) gunslinger.
Colton - another rustler who wants to get with Ellen.
Others - Her uncle, a couple Mexican shepherds, plus the Mexican housekeeper and her husband, who are described in terms that, frankly, are kinda racist. She and her husband have the gall to GTFO before the bullets fly, which is like, the most sensible thing *anyone* in this novel does, and Ellen thinks they're being cowardly, and it's like, no, girl, they literally 100% don't owe your deadbeat dad their loyalty. Oh, yes, and the rest of the rustler-men who serve as cannon fodder and to make gross sexual comments about Ellen and gross racist comments about Jean.

Neutral
Jack Sprague - who is an older man who trains mules and is Ellen's only actual friend and mostly serves to pass information on about how Jean's willing to beat up her dad's men who bad mouth her behind her back.

The plot:
(Note- After this next paragraph, I hope anyone reading this mentally inserts "AND THEN" at the start of each and every paragraph.)

The breeding pair have a meet-cute, culminating with him kissing her without warning or asking, b/c he "can't help it", (sure you can't), but then apologizing for being too forward (rape culture solved!)(that was sarcasm). They plan on meeting up again, but then they realize who one another are, and she's like HELL NO and he's like I HAVE THE SAD because she doesn't want to hook up with the son of her dad's mortal enemy. Despite this, the only major obstacle they seem to have to their mutual attraction is that when they meet the second time, she feels like his faith in her "goodness" is patronizing (it kinda is) and lies to him, telling him that she's actually a total slut, because she wants to hurt his feels. It does hurt his feels so he has to slap her and then sexually assault her. ROMANCE! (I know, this is actually what has passed for ROMANCE! in popular media for pretty much all of the 20th and into the 21st century, but fuck that noise, it ain't romantic).

The feud gets bloody when the Jorth gang murders one of the Isbel shepherds and attack their ranch, which results in the death of Guy Isbel and one of the family friends, when they attempt to semi-peacefully defuse the situation ("I use Intimidate! I roll... a 1" "Cool, well, they shoot you dead!").

Jean stealths out to kill two of the Jorth dudes who are intermittently firing their guns at the house, where everyone's held up, one of them, a nameless mook, and Greaves, who survives the brutal stabbing long enough to tell the rest of the gang how Jean essentially told him he was killing him for badmouthing Ellen, thus confirming that he has a crush on the boss's daughter. (Literally, even Romeo was better at subtlety than this guy). Jean has a crisis of conscience, realizing that despite the fact that he believes Ellen to be a total slut hussy, he can't and won't kill the members of her actual family, and sneaks back to the house without killing more bad guys. This whole scene culminates in the traumatized redhead and the other guy's wife going out, unarmed, and in defiance of the patriarch, to bury the bodies of their husbands in the middle of it all, showing the grit and courage of women, and making it one of the few actual ACTIONS taken by women in this novel. (This novel does not, in any way, pass the Bechdel test, btw).

After the two women show more courage than all the men involved, the Jorth gang retreats, and the fight moves to town, where Gaston Isbel tries to defuse by challenging his rival to a gunfight, but is shot by the gang on the approach. Blue reveals that he's a gunslinger, and they concoct a clever plan where Jean sneaks up behind and distracts the gang so that he can take out as many of the Jorth gang, including their gunslinger, Queen, as possible before being shot himself. He survives long enough to be carted away and die of his wounds elsewhere, but takes out a bunch, including Lee Jorth, Ellen's dad.

Then we shift to Ellen, who is sitting at home without any knowledge of goings-on, other than the fact that her dad and his gang all took off, and she's noticed that, rather suspiciously, there is no actual ranching going on around their ranch, and it miggggght just be the front for some criminal activity, until Sprague turns up to be like "GIRL, that new dude in town REALLY likes you, I heard, and also, that fight your dad's in got super bloody and people are dying, but GIRL HE LIKES YOU". He encourages her to leave, but she's too loyal to abandon her pappy.

Her dad's surviving gang comes back, let by Colton, who feeds Ellen a story about how her dad's totally not dead yet, and we're not taking all his gold, because we're just going to go meet him, but also be creepy and kidnap you! So she's brought along in the mad dash to get away from the survivors of the other guys.

They run to the rendezvous with the other survivors, mostly where her uncle is dying, and she tries to help her uncle before the Isbels catch up, and Colton gets progressively creepier towards her. her uncle tells her that he dad died, and Colton tries to cover his ass by telling her that Jean is the one who shot her dad, and his dying words were that he wanted Colton to marry her and take all the gold to start a new life. Weirdly, Ellen doesn't believe him, but then the Isbels catch up and Colton drags her along, leaving her uncle to die. Jean shoots Colton's horse (while Ellen is on it), and would shoot Colton except he's using Ellen as a meat shield.

Running through the wilderness ensues, the Jorth faction splits up, and Ellen is briefly separated from the others. She finds Bill Isbel as he's dying and he confesses that he was helping the rustlers, before Colton finds her again.

The stragglers of both factions pick one another off one by one, until Jean's the last Isbel and there's three of Jorth's men left, plus Ellen. Jean is led into a trap by two of them, and, badly wounded, loses his guns, and has to run for his life.

He's forced to hide in the loft as an abandoned cabin as he thinks his pursuers catch up to him, but it's actually Colton and Ellen. The ensuing argument between them, with Colton getting super mad at Ellen for not being receptive to his advances reveals to Jean that she really is a "good" girl. Colton goes to sexually assault her and rips her shirt, exposing her bosom (racy), as Jean is getting himself into position to jump Colton from hiding, but they are interrupted when the one other surviving gang member arrives to announce that his buddy fled and he's alone on Jean's trail.

While the two men are distracted, Ellen notices Jean's trail of blood into the loft. She tries to seduce Colton into leaving the cabin with her, so that they don't find Jean, while the other fellow is off with the horses. This doesn't work, however, and he realizes that Jean's there watching them. Ellen attempts to persuade him to leave and let Jean live, saying she'll passively go with him, but he's not having it, so she fires two warning shots, into his chest kills him herself, with her own gun. The other guy hears the shots and runs back, so that, in the confusion, Jean can jump down and knife him, and then the lovers run outside where Ellen is traumatized and Jean comforts her and the book ends.

I will give Zane Grey this: Jean's final line, the one that ends the book, is actually kinda sweet. Buuuuut not sweet enough to make me forget that he totally slapped her for telling him that she had got with other guys before she met him.

Literally also want to point out that this is their third meeting, total. Like, there are Disney princesses who spend more time getting to know their lovers.
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